Diabetic retinopathy — an eye condition that affects people with diabetes — is the fastest growing cause of blindness, with nearly 415 million diabetic patients at risk worldwide. The disease can be treated if detected early, but if not, it can lead to irreversible blindness.

One of the most common ways to detect diabetic eye disease is to have a specialist examine pictures of the back of the eye and determine whether there are signs of the disease, and if so, how severe it is. While annual screening is recommended for all patients with diabetes, many people live in areas without easy access to specialist care. That means millions of people aren’t getting the care they need to prevent loss of vision.

A few years ago, a Google research team began studying whether machine learning could be used to screen for diabetic retinopathy (DR). Today, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, we’ve published our results: a deep learning algorithm capable of interpreting signs of DR in retinal photographs, potentially helping doctors screen more patients, especially in underserved communities with limited resources.

Examples of retinal photographs that are taken to screen for DR. A healthy retina can be seen on the left; the retina on the right has lesions, which are indicative of bleeding and fluid leakage in the eye.

Working with a team of doctors in India and the U.S., we created a dataset of 128,000 images and used them to train a deep neural network to detect diabetic retinopathy. We then compared our algorithm’s performance to another set of images examined by a panel of board-certified ophthalmologists. Our algorithm performs on par with the ophthalmologists, achieving both high sensitivity and specificity. For more details, see our post on the Research blog.

We’re excited by the results, but there’s a lot more to do before an algorithm like this can be used widely. For example, interpretation of a 2D retinal photograph is only one step in the process of diagnosing diabetic eye disease — in some cases, doctors use a 3D imaging technology to examine various layers of a retina in detail. Our colleagues at DeepMind are working on applying machine learning to that method. In the future, these two complementary methods might be used together to assist doctors in the diagnosis of a wide spectrum of eye diseases.

Automated, highly accurate screening methods have the potential to assist doctors in evaluating more patients and quickly routing those who need help to a specialist. We hope this study will be one of many examples to come demonstrating the ability of machine learning to help solve important problems in healthcare.

Diabetic retinopathy — an eye condition that affects people with diabetes — is the fastest growing cause of blindness, with nearly 415 million diabetic patients at risk worldwide. The disease can be treated if detected early, but if not, it can lead to irreversible blindness.

One of the most common ways to detect diabetic eye disease is to have a specialist examine pictures of the back of the eye and determine whether there are signs of the disease, and if so, how severe it is. While annual screening is recommended for all patients with diabetes, many people live in areas without easy access to specialist care. That means millions of people aren’t getting the care they need to prevent loss of vision.

A few years ago, a Google research team began studying whether machine learning could be used to screen for diabetic retinopathy (DR). Today, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, we’ve published our results: a deep learning algorithm capable of interpreting signs of DR in retinal photographs, potentially helping doctors screen more patients, especially in underserved communities with limited resources.

Examples of retinal photographs that are taken to screen for DR. A healthy retina can be seen on the left; the retina on the right has lesions, which are indicative of bleeding and fluid leakage in the eye.

Working with a team of doctors in India and the U.S., we created a dataset of 128,000 images and used them to train a deep neural network to detect diabetic retinopathy. We then compared our algorithm’s performance to another set of images examined by a panel of board-certified ophthalmologists. Our algorithm performs on par with the ophthalmologists, achieving both high sensitivity and specificity. For more details, see our post on the Research blog.

We’re excited by the results, but there’s a lot more to do before an algorithm like this can be used widely. For example, interpretation of a 2D retinal photograph is only one step in the process of diagnosing diabetic eye disease — in some cases, doctors use a 3D imaging technology to examine various layers of a retina in detail. Our colleagues at DeepMind are working on applying machine learning to that method. In the future, these two complementary methods might be used together to assist doctors in the diagnosis of a wide spectrum of eye diseases.

Automated, highly accurate screening methods have the potential to assist doctors in evaluating more patients and quickly routing those who need help to a specialist. We hope this study will be one of many examples to come demonstrating the ability of machine learning to help solve important problems in healthcare.

Editor’s note: Today we hear from Steven Simons, IT Manager for Customer Retail and Product Systems at Toyota Motor, Europe. Read how the world’s largest automaker used Chrome digital signage to provide its showroom customers an innovative and immersive customer experience.

It’s no secret that the internet has transformed how people buy cars — a Toyota study shows an increasing number of people research online before visiting a retailer. In fact, the study found, most people purchase a car after visiting only one showroom. So at Toyota Motor Europe, we set out to create a more engaging customer experience by extending our customers’ digital travels into the showroom, and connect browsing online with seeing our cars in person.

We first experimented with digital signage in our showrooms in 2014 to display information about our cars in ways that reflected what customers saw online. However, the system we were using was expensive, unstable and difficult to maintain and manage.

So, we turned to Chrome in late 2015 and replaced our existing digital signage with Asus Chromeboxes connected to 42-inch flatscreen TVs. We manage and program all of the devices centrally from Toyota headquarters. Retailers just install the Chromeboxes and TVs, and they’re up and running. That way, retailers can focus on their customers rather than on technology.

The Chrome-based digital signage has become an important sales tool. It displays videos about Toyota vehicles, customized according to the showroom area where the signs are located. So, if a system is installed in a showroom where hybrid cars are popular, the videos highlight hybrids.

Salespeople use the screens to show customers in-depth information about Toyota vehicles. Thanks to Chrome, salespeople can easily answer customers’ technical questions about things like a car’s Bluetooth capabilities, leading to a smoother sales process. The signs also feature a car configurator, which allows customers to explore and personalize their vehicles. Consumers typically come in with plenty of online research in hand, and they can pick right back up with these configurations in store on our digital signage. Across Europe, 100,000 customers a month use the signage.

We’ve deployed Chrome digital signage in 3,000 showrooms so far, and plan to install between 7,000 and 10,000 digital signs in total across 3,600 Toyota retailers in Europe. Google Cloud partner Fourcast worked with us on the deployment with a packaged, end-to-end solution, and ensured the systems were delivered on a tight, five-day timeframe.

The Chrome-based digital signage is more reliable and easier to deploy than the previous solution, reducing time spent on maintenance, management and troubleshooting. It also saves us on hardware and deployment costs.

Chrome-based digital signage has done everything we hoped it would. Its features let us show off what’s great about Toyota cars. It’s popular with sales staff and customers, as evidenced by increased usage since it was deployed. Retailer demand is greater than we estimated, showing that it’s an important sales enabler. Overall, the system is meeting our customers’ needs while reinforcing our reputation as a technically sophisticated company. Thanks to Chrome digital signage, our customers enjoy a more unified online and offline sales experience.

In 2013, we released Google Earth Timelapse, our most comprehensive picture of the Earth’s changing surface. This interactive experience enabled people to explore these changes like never before—to watch the sprouting of Dubai’s artificial Palm Islands, the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, and the impressive urban expansion of Las Vegas, Nevada. Today, we’re making our largest update to Timelapse yet, with four additional years of imagery, petabytes of new data, and a sharper view of the Earth from 1984 to 2016. We’ve even teamed up again with our friends at TIME to give you an updated take on compelling locations.

Leveraging the same techniques we used to improve Google Maps and Google Earth back in June, the new Timelapse reveals a sharper view of our planet, with truer colors and fewer distracting artifacts. A great example of this is San Francisco and Oakland in California:

Using Google Earth Engine, we sifted through about three quadrillion pixels—that’s 3 followed by 15 zeroes—from more than 5,000,000 satellite images. For this latest update, we had access to more images from the past, thanks to the Landsat Global Archive Consolidation Program, and fresh images from two new satellites, Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2.

We took the best of all those pixels to create 33 images of the entire planet, one for each year. We then encoded these new 3.95 terapixel global images into just over 25,000,000 overlapping multi-resolution video tiles, made interactively explorable by Carnegie Mellon CREATE Lab’s Time Machine library, a technology for creating and viewing zoomable and pannable timelapses over space and time.

In 2013, we released Google Earth Timelapse, our most comprehensive picture of the Earth’s changing surface. This interactive experience enabled people to explore these changes like never before—to watch the sprouting of Dubai’s artificial Palm Islands, the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, and the impressive urban expansion of Las Vegas, Nevada. Today, we’re making our largest update to Timelapse yet, with four additional years of imagery, petabytes of new data, and a sharper view of the Earth from 1984 to 2016. We’ve even teamed up again with our friends at TIME to give you an updated take on compelling locations.

Leveraging the same techniques we used to improve Google Maps and Google Earth back in June, the new Timelapse reveals a sharper view of our planet, with truer colors and fewer distracting artifacts. A great example of this is San Francisco and Oakland in California:

Using Google Earth Engine, we sifted through about three quadrillion pixels—that’s 3 followed by 15 zeroes—from more than 5,000,000 satellite images. For this latest update, we had access to more images from the past, thanks to the Landsat Global Archive Consolidation Program, and fresh images from two new satellites, Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2.

We took the best of all those pixels to create 33 images of the entire planet, one for each year. We then encoded these new 3.95 terapixel global images into just over 25,000,000 overlapping multi-resolution video tiles, made interactively explorable by Carnegie Mellon CREATE Lab’s Time Machine library, a technology for creating and viewing zoomable and pannable timelapses over space and time.

From striking skylines to captivating vistas, talented photographers share beautiful, eye catching work on Google+ every day. To bring these photos to a wider audience, we’ve long showcased a selection of them on TVs and monitors around the world via Google Fiber and millions of Chromecast devices.

Now, we’re pleased to be able to make these beautiful photos by our members even more accessible by bringing them to your computers and phones. With our new Featured Photos screensaver for Mac, you can display stunning, high-resolution photography from our Google+ members whenever your computer is inactive. If you have an Android device, you can use the Wallpapers app to display these same photos as background images on your home or lock screen. The photos are attributed to their photographers so it’s easy to find and follow the ones you like on Google+.

If you enjoy taking photos and would like to have yours considered, all you have to do is share them publicly on Google+ (if you don’t want to be considered, you can turn this option off in your Google+ settings). If you’re an avid photographer and want to increase your chance of being considered, we encourage you to join the Google+ Create program. It’s a great opportunity to showcase your work globally.

From striking skylines to captivating vistas, talented photographers share beautiful, eye catching work on Google+ every day. To bring these photos to a wider audience, we’ve long showcased a selection of them on TVs and monitors around the world via Google Fiber and millions of Chromecast devices.

Now, we’re pleased to be able to make these beautiful photos by our members even more accessible by bringing them to your computers and phones. With our new Featured Photos screensaver for Mac, you can display stunning, high-resolution photography from our Google+ members whenever your computer is inactive. If you have an Android device, you can use the Wallpapers app to display these same photos as background images on your home or lock screen. The photos are attributed to their photographers so it’s easy to find and follow the ones you like on Google+.

If you enjoy taking photos and would like to have yours considered, all you have to do is share them publicly on Google+ (if you don’t want to be considered, you can turn this option off in your Google+ settings). If you’re an avid photographer and want to increase your chance of being considered, we encourage you to join the Google+ Create program. It’s a great opportunity to showcase your work globally.

The great thing about the web is that it enables anyone – from anywhere, of any age, and any skillset – to start a new business, grow an existing one, become an entrepreneur, a developer or a content creator or hone a new skill. From Berlin to Birmingham we’ve met people across Europe who are doing just that – developing the digital know-how needed to achieve their dreams.

Like Evrard in France, who works for GreenRiver, a small company providing private cruises along the river Seine and the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris. He joined our training programme Google pour Les Pros, where he was trained by a Google AdWords advisor over three months. He learned how to launch digital marketing campaigns and discovered other tools that helped increase their online visibility. He told us, “After Google pour Les Pros training our business grew by 30% and sales grew by 60% in one year”. Green River is now using Evrard’s learning as a stepping stone to further success.

Evrard is just one of the nearly 2 million people we’ve trained over the last 2 years as part of our Growth Engine programme to help close the digital skills gap among Europeans. And yet there’s still more work to be done. On current projections, the growing gap between skills required and the training that workers receive, has lead the EU to predict that almost a million ICT jobs would remain unfilled by 2020.

That’s why today Google, Bertelsmann (the global media, services and education company) and e-learning provider Udacity are coming together with a goal of closing the mobile digital skills gap in Europe and preparing the new European workforce with the mobile development skills needed to help them get a job or start their own business.

With Vishal Makhijani of Udacity and Steven Moran of Bertelsmann at Monday’s announcement

In Europe, more than half the population primarily uses their mobile phone to access the web, and that’s only increasing. This represents a huge opportunity for ambitious Europeans to join the more than 1.3 million developers in the region benefitting from the advancement of the mobile economy. According to Stackoverflow 2015 study, 42% of developers are self taught and could benefit from acquiring new expertise to take them to the next level. Android tops the list of new languages that developers want to learn.

We want to help, which is why we’re funding 10,000 Android Developer training scholarships across the EU via Udacity. Aspiring developers can apply for one of 9,000 scholarships for an Android Basics course and more experienced programmers for one of 1,000 scholarships for the Associate Android Developer Fast Track, a training course that leads to Android developer certification, a key credential for the industry. Applications are open at https://www.udacity.com/google-scholarships.

At the same time, Bertelsmann will start shifting skill-building and training budgets across its about 1,000 businesses towards ICT, in conjunction with Udacity’s training programs. In addition, starting next year, every qualified apprentice, student and trainee at Bertelsmann – about 2,000 women and men across Europe – will be granted a Nanodegree scholarship.

By getting together with Bertelsmann and Udacity we aim to close the mobile digital skills gap, and help people to get the in-demand skills needed to get a job or advance their career. These scholarships are a chance for all aspiring mobile developers to make the most of the opportunity by mastering accredited digital skills that will put them on the path to success. We look forward to seeing what they do next.

The great thing about the web is that it enables anyone – from anywhere, of any age, and any skillset – to start a new business, grow an existing one, become an entrepreneur, a developer or a content creator or hone a new skill. From Berlin to Birmingham we’ve met people across Europe who are doing just that – developing the digital know-how needed to achieve their dreams.

Like Evrard in France, who works for GreenRiver, a small company providing private cruises along the river Seine and the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris. He joined our training programme Google pour Les Pros, where he was trained by a Google AdWords advisor over three months. He learned how to launch digital marketing campaigns and discovered other tools that helped increase their online visibility. He told us, “After Google pour Les Pros training our business grew by 30% and sales grew by 60% in one year”. Green River is now using Evrard’s learning as a stepping stone to further success.

Evrard is just one of the nearly 2 million people we’ve trained over the last 2 years as part of our Growth Engine programme to help close the digital skills gap among Europeans. And yet there’s still more work to be done. On current projections, the growing gap between skills required and the training that workers receive, has lead the EU to predict that almost a million ICT jobs would remain unfilled by 2020.

That’s why today Google, Bertelsmann (the global media, services and education company) and e-learning provider Udacity are coming together with a goal of closing the mobile digital skills gap in Europe and preparing the new European workforce with the mobile development skills needed to help them get a job or start their own business.

With Vishal Makhijani of Udacity and Steven Moran of Bertelsmann at today’s announcement

In Europe, more than half the population primarily uses their mobile phone to access the web, and that’s only increasing. This represents a huge opportunity for ambitious Europeans to join the more than 1.3 million developers in the region benefitting from the advancement of the mobile economy. According to Stackoverflow 2015 study, 42% of developers are self taught and could benefit from acquiring new expertise to take them to the next level. Android tops the list of new languages that developers want to learn.

We want to help, which is why we’re funding 10,000 Android Developer training scholarships across the EU via Udacity. Aspiring developers can apply for one of 9,000 scholarships for an Android Basics course and more experienced programmers for one of 1,000 scholarships for the Associate Android Developer Fast Track, a training course that leads to Android developer certification, a key credential for the industry. Applications are open at https://www.udacity.com/google-scholarships.

At the same time, Bertelsmann will start shifting skill-building and training budgets across its about 1,000 businesses towards ICT, in conjunction with Udacity’s training programs. In addition, starting next year, every qualified apprentice, student and trainee at Bertelsmann – about 2,000 women and men across Europe – will be granted a Nanodegree scholarship.

By getting together with Bertelsmann and Udacity we aim to close the mobile digital skills gap, and help people to get the in-demand skills needed to get a job or advance their career. These scholarships are a chance for all aspiring mobile developers to make the most of the opportunity by mastering accredited digital skills that will put them on the path to success. We look forward to seeing what they do next.

Since going online, Ucok Durian, or “Durian Guy,” has gone from selling 100 kg of Indonesia’s famous Medan durian at their stall everyday to nearly 40 tons a month. As part of our series of interviews with entrepreneurs across Asia Pacific who use the Internet to grow their business, we spoke with Ananda Perwira, Ucok Durian’s marketing director (and brother to founder Johan Hasibuan), to find out how this startup is rapidly expanding across the Indonesian archipelago.

Tell us your story. How did Ucok Durian begin?My brother, Johan Hasibuan, began peddling durians nearly 20 years ago. I’ve always loved durians, so when I realized how hard it is to find Medan durians outside of Medan, I figured I’d join him and develop the business. Since I came onboard earlier this year, my sister, parents and other relatives have also joined. Now it’s a family business.

What inspired you to begin selling durians online?Using Google’s Keyword Planner, I noticed that “durian Medan” is a popular search term on the Internet, but despite this, very few traders have a website selling durians online. I saw an opportunity and went for it. We built the ucokdurian.id website on WordPress and Hostinger, a free website hosting service. The website theme and plugins we use also are free.

Image courtesy of Ucok Durian

That’s a great use of free resources. How else has the Internet helped your business? Before going online, we were only able to sell 100 kilograms of durian per day. We’d seen the impact that the Internet has had on many other businesses, but never imagined what it could do for a perishable product like ours. Today, thanks to the new customers we’ve found over the Internet, we’re reaching almost 40 tons a month. That’s 12 times more than we used to sell just a year ago!

Wow, congratulations. Now that sales have taken off, what is the farthest place to which you have mailed a durian?

As a result of this growth, we’ve opened two warehouse distribution centers in Jakarta just this past September. These enable us to send Medan durians nearly 7,500km away, to Jayapura, the capital of Papua, which is Indonesia’s easternmost province. We also get orders from Malaysia, Singapore, and even as far as Saudi Arabia and the United States. We’re now working on ways to fulfill these orders, so we hope to start shipping overseas soon.

Ucok Durian’s founder Johan says Medan durians from North Sumatra are loved for their unique bittersweet taste and are known as a delicacy across the country (photo courtesy of Ucok Durian)

Photo courtesy of Ucok Durian

Photo courtesy of Ucok Durian

What advice do you have for entrepreneurs seeking to take their business online? In the beginning, I wasn’t too confident that bringing the business online would be successful. I’d been thinking about it since 2015, but only took action in 2016. Why? Because I was afraid to fail. However, I also knew that if I didn’t try, I would ensure my failure.

I have just five tips for people who are starting a business online:

Help people. Don’t start your business for money. Do it because you want to provide solutions for people. Make it easier for people to get products or services they need.

Think global, act local. To start your business, you don’t have to build a rocket like Elon Musk does. See something simple that has potential around you.

Read. I never attended marketing school. However, I consider myself a digital marketing geek. The Internet provides everything you need, so Google it and just read.

Continuous improvements. You stop, you die. Try to improve something everyday, even if it’s just 1% better than yesterday.

Be grateful. Don’t be cocky with what you have (intelligence, experience, wealth…). Success is temporary unless you’re willing to keep working at it.